cutting the trunk
- Thread starter maverickheath
- Start date
M. Frary
Bonsai Godzilla
I will be when I get me 9 foemina.
Lazylightningny
Masterpiece
Go with Anthony's suggestion. Go lower and air layer the top.
markyscott
Imperial Masterpiece
It's more than a two season job.
Repot. Get it in to good soil. Give it lots of light. Feed and leave it outside for a season. Let it get strong and healthy. Study Chuah's article vey carefully:
https://bonsaipenjing.wordpress.com/2014/01/13/17/#more-17
Plan on layering in spring 2017. You should be able to separate later that summer, but plan on letting it grow the rest of that season. Here's a Chinese elm I layered this year to get rid of a taperless trunk with a weird curve.
Next spring I'll cut back hard.
Scott
Repot. Get it in to good soil. Give it lots of light. Feed and leave it outside for a season. Let it get strong and healthy. Study Chuah's article vey carefully:
https://bonsaipenjing.wordpress.com/2014/01/13/17/#more-17
Plan on layering in spring 2017. You should be able to separate later that summer, but plan on letting it grow the rest of that season. Here's a Chinese elm I layered this year to get rid of a taperless trunk with a weird curve.
Next spring I'll cut back hard.
Scott
maverickheath
Mame
Yeah getting it healthy is the main task but when I repot it what about trying to flip it on its side ???
sorce
Nonsense Rascal
markyscott
Imperial Masterpiece
Bonsai don't do flips well. And if it's on its side the soil will fall out of the pot and it will be difficult to water.
Seriously - you're preoccupied with the branching, but it's irrelevant. They're sloppy, but nothing that pruning can't take care of and new branches can be grown out quickly. There is an order in which we things get done. 1) health, 2) trunk & nebari, 3) primary branch structure, 4) crown & ramification.
Once it's healthy and growing well, focus on the trunk - that needs to be corrected first. Don't worry about 3&4 until 1&2 are taken care of. Cut off all the branches, change the planting angle, or chop it where you originally suggested and what are you left with? An uninteresting taperless trunk with an unnatural bend! Why time and energy growing new branches on top of that?
Read Chuah's article. It's an elegant solution for how to deal with a problem tree exactly like yours. He started off with one bad S tree and ended up with two great ones that any of us would be proud to have on our bench. And it didn't even take that long - just a few years between the chop and the show.
Scott
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